Barshim eyes victory in Lausanne

Qatar’s Mutaz Essa Barshim will go up against his joint Olympic gold medallist Gianmarco Tamberi of Italy at the Lausanne Diamond League meeting on Friday. Barshim, who won the Monaco Diamond League two weeks ago, will once again be the man to beat at the Stade de la Pontaise.
The three-time world champion needs a few more points if he is to qualify for the season-ending final in Zurich next month. In Lausanne, he will go up against standings leader Django Lovett of Canada and fellow world medallists Woo Sanghyeok and Andriy Protsenko. Barshim cleared 2.30 in Monaco and will be aiming to continue his winning journey, that includes third consecutive world title in Eugene.
Tamberi, the reigning Diamond League champion, appears to be hitting his stride, having claimed his second European Championships gold medal in Munich earlier this month. The Italian still has work to do in the Diamond League, however. He is currently third in the qualification standings, and will look to pick up his first win of the season in Lausanne.

India’s Chopra returns to action on Friday
It has been an emotional summer for Indian javelin star Neeraj Chopra, who stormed to the silver medal at the World Atheltics Championships in Eugene before injury forced him to sit out the Commonwealth Games a month later.
Unable to defend his title in Birmingham, Chopra will no doubt be chomping at the bit when he returns to action in Lausanne. After narrowly missing out to Anderson Peters in Stockholm earlier this season, the Indian will want to pick up his first ever Diamond League win, and in doing so join Peters, Jakub Vadlejch and Julian Weber on the entry lists for the final in Zurich.
Meanwhile, the stacked fields in Lausanne feature 12 recently-crowned individual world champions, the same number of individual Olympic gold medallists from Tokyo and nine champions from last year’s Diamond League.
There is incredible quality, including Jakob Ingebrigtsen – fresh from another European 1,500m and 5,000m double – against Timothy Cheruiyot, Abel Kipsang and Oliver Hoare in the shorter event, and Sifan Hassan against Ejgayehu Taye, Laura Muir and Konstanze Klosterhalfen in the 3,000m.
The men’s 200m promises to be wonderful, between the Americans Noah Lyles, double World champion, Erriyon Knighton, junior World record holder in the 100 meters and Michael Norman, World champion in the 400m. Lyles ran in 19”31 at the previous Worlds in Eugene (USA), 0”12 from Usain Bolt’s World record. Star of the European Championships in Munich with three gold medals to her name, the Dutch Femke Bol will light up the women’s 400m hurdles for a fantastic duel against American Dalilah Mohamed, World champion in 2019.